


Please Drink Responsibly

by Hlessi



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bilbo-centric, Break Up, Drunk Sex, F/M, Going Abroad Fixes Nothing, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Pining, Professor Bilbo Baggins, Teacher-Student Relationship, Unrequited, and everything, except not really, poor decision-making
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 06:00:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2337761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hlessi/pseuds/Hlessi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years, several visa problems, and one horrible break-up by way of a fellow expat named Bard Bowman later, Bilbo answered Gandalf's suggestion that he return home to a tenured position and no raise with relief.</p>
<p>Then he cocked it up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblring poorly at [bilboisms.tumblr.com](http://bilboisms.tumblr.com).

Consciousness was the realization that he wasn't wearing any trousers.

On the heels of that particular realization came a series of realizations. He was naked except for his socks, which was not at all good because he only ever forgot to take them off when he was too drunk to find his feet. There was a throbbing pain behind his left eye, which he knew from miserable experience was only the warning shots of a gruesome hangover. The pillow he was drooling into had much too high a thread count to be his, so he knew he was not at home. Finally, in news related to the previous point, his entire body seemed to be aching in a very suggestive way that began with the irritated skin around his mouth and neck and ended with the awkward discomfort in his bottom.

_Oh no,_ he whimpered to himself, screwing up his eyes against the light, the headache, the noise, and the awful taste in his mouth. He turned his face into the lovely pillow. _Please, God, don't let me have slept with a student. Or a professor. Or one of those JET cunts._

The pillow smelled of cologne. Not his, because Bilbo believed in smelling like himself, but nice, and not too much. It was masculine. Subtle. Distinctive. A few other gender-stereotypical descriptors. And much too expensive for a _laowai_ , or at least the ones he knew.

_Did I go home with a banker?_ Bilbo almost managed to forget his imminent hangover as he sniffed up sublimated money. _Couldn't have. I don't know any bankers, and I_ told _them I have to get up early for my...my..._

Bilbo's throat closed. His stomach wobbled.

There was no flight to get up early for. This was not China. He could not have gone home with a banker from his farewell party because his farewell party had been last week before his flight. This was England, and the party he'd been drinking at had been the oh weren't you in Japan or something party that Cousin Primula had hosted for him at the posh pub where she worked. There'd been a discount.

_That's right,_ Bilbo reminded himself, _I've come home._ It was all coming back, the flight, the delay, the incident at customs, Adalgrim picking him up at the airport, the mouldy air of a flat that had not been cleaned as thoroughly as it could have been for two years. Classes had begun; he'd taught three of them already and had identified at least two students he'd drown in a toilet at the first excuse.

_Right, yes, I was at the party, and then..._ Bilbo began to frown, discovered that it was more painful than it ought to be, and quit. _I...I...I was at the pub, and then...and then..._

It was at this time that Bilbo, suddenly and against his will, became aware that there was someone else in the bed.

_Oh God,_ Bilbo thought into the pillow. _Oh God, oh Christ, oh_ fuck _. Who is it who is it who is it._

Who had been at the party? Him. Prim. Drogo. Gandalf, obviously, anywhere there was a free drink. Radagast plus hedgehog. Dr. Peredhil had been kind enough to stop by. Some of the Took cousins, but not Adalgrim because the babysitter cancelled. A crowd of Brandybucks. Several of his fellow professors from the university, and some intern named Ollie or Ozzie or something. His editor, his agent, someone he was supposed to know from the museum. Who else?

Bilbo remembered being utterly relieved that none of his students had caught wind of the do. After two years of Chinese university students, he was experiencing something of a reverse culture shock. When _he'd_ been at school, even the cheekiest third years would not have dreamed of crashing a party full of professors and deans, or even _wanted_ to, but youths today were so bloody forward. He wouldn't put it past the likes of Vilsson to just come swanning into a closed event, smiling his way past the—

Nausea had him in a clammy clinch. Bilbo swallowed hard. _No. Please. Not Vilsson. Anyone but Vilsson._

But it was a short-lived terror. As Bilbo came more and more awake, he was perceiving more and more of his immediate environment, and whoever was lying next to him was much too big and heavy to be Vilsson. This was a large man, emanating heat and presence, weighing down his side of the mattress. Vilsson was in constant peril of being blown away by a random gust of wind. Besides, Vilsson didn't smell this good.

The noise was the man snoring. It was awful. Bilbo didn't know anyone who could possibly snore like this. Except Gandalf, and if he was in bed with Dr. Grey then he was on the next plane back abroad if he had to take a position in Pyongyang. Or he was getting a raise, at long last.

_All right,_ he told himself firmly, _that's quite enough. You'll have to look at him. The worst that happens is you change your mobile again. You lived through the Morian Wall, you will live through this._

Carefully, excruciatingly slowly, Bilbo raised his head out of the pillow without moving any other part of this body, thinking _don't be springs, don't be springs_ at the mattress. His face left the safety of the pillow and, eyes still closed, he took his first deep, conscious breath, which provided him with yet more proof that someone had very recently gotten to know him very well indeed, if his increasing cognizance of his bruised hips, thighs, and arms and the rawness between his legs wasn't enough.

There was no use denying it: he'd clearly somehow picked up a bit of rough somewhere between his oh are you back party and here. Having eliminated everyone he recalled seeing at the pub, Bilbo's natural optimism was rearing its obnoxious head. This didn't have to be so dire. Why _not_ celebrate his homecoming with an evening out and a shag? So long as he wasn't limping into class that afternoon, and he didn't remember anything too embarrassing later, this ought to qualify as a cracking good night. Perhaps he could even get a cup of tea and a number before he left, assuming the chap wasn't too hard to look at.

Hopefully, and even a little shyly, Bilbo turned his head toward the other occupant of the bed and peeked at him through his eyelashes.

The only reason he didn't faint, he would think later, was because he was already lying down, and if he didn't shriek, that was only because his entire body had gone stiff as a board. His heart stopped within him, which was not romantic but _terrifying_ , because Bilbo really, honestly thought he was dying of a heart attack before he was thirty. His life didn't pass before his eyes, but for a second or two he was certainly looking for it.

Everything took on a plastic sheen of unreality. The faint light of early morning coming through the drawn curtains was an otherworldly glare. Vaguely, distantly, Bilbo observed the geometric headboard his pillow was pushed up against, designed to offer convenient shelving which currently wasn't being used. The colours of the drapes and the sheets and the walls leaped out at him, all dark, all sombre, exquisitely dignified and tasteful. All the furniture he could see was minimal and intimidatingly rectilinear, from the elegant wardrobe against the far wall to the table beside the bed and its accompanying metal lamp. The room was spacious, and two of the walls were almost entirely windows, currently draped against the morning. The floor was polished wood, and there were—he could see a tie, a blue silk tie, over there, by the wardrobe, and—

Bilbo licked his lips. He swallowed. He trembled.

_No,_ he thought numbly, _no, no, no. No no no._ He closed his eyes. Opened them. Closed them. Opened them.

Thorin was still there.

He was lying on his back, one arm over his head, the other at his side, a hand on his stomach, and he was naked, the sheets kicked off in the night, the whole solid, hairy mass of him laid out like Roman statuary. His greying black hair, longer than it had been two years ago, was fanned across his own pillow, and his beard made his grave, lofty face, relaxed in sleep, look somehow _more frightening_ , fierce, even savage, brow furrowed as if he were yelling at people in his dreams. He was snoring, his mouth slightly open, but this imparted nothing of vulnerability; rather, it seemed only to emphasize his unassailable manliness. He was Jupiter in repose.

Bilbo could have wept.  
 _“No,”_ he moaned, just under his breath, and then he pressed his face back into his own pillow to muffle himself. Thorin did not stop snoring.

Was this a dream? The pain swelling behind his eyes seemed to disprove that, despite the nightmarish quality of what he was seeing. Could this be some kind of mistake? Could that not be Thorin at all, but some uncanny copy, an English _jian_ , whom Bilbo just _happened_ to meet in his drunken abandon and who just _happened_ to wear his hair in the exact same Khazad style as Thorin Eikinskjaldi—

Bilbo looked again, desperate.

No. Those were Thorin's braids, his silver clasps. Thorin's blue jewels in Thorin's black hair. This was real. Bilbo was in bed with Thorin Eikinskjaldi.

He was in bed with Dis's brother.

The urge to cry was almost overwhelming. Bilbo had to turn his face back away from Thorin and concentrate on his breathing in order not to begin sobbing then and there. Despair warred with pride. The only thing worse than waking up in bed with Thorin was for Thorin to then wake up and find Bilbo crying. Thorin had seen Bilbo cry twice before, and that was more than enough humiliation for one lifetime. If Thorin saw him crying again, Bilbo would have to commit ritual suicide.

What had happened? How had this come to be? Where had he been and what had he been doing, _how_ had they even met? Prim would not have invited him, she wasn't so cruel or stupid, and he couldn't think what Gandalf would have to gain from doing it. Had Bilbo been drunkenly calling people? But how he could he, when he didn't even have a mobile yet? He didn't even remember anybody's number, not after two years, except...

Oh. Oh dear. Oh dear no.

Had Bilbo gotten a hold of someone's phone and drunk dialled Dis?

It was too much. He couldn't think about it any more. Not while he was naked and hungover in Thorin's bed. Bilbo had to put his panic away, be a grown bloody man, and run the bloody hell away before Thorin woke up.

The mattress was actually foam, almost noiseless under him as he slid, without sitting up or really moving more than he had to, from his position near the headboard off to the side, the sheets scarcely whispering under him. He reached out with his foot, _hating_ the sock, and felt for the floor. When he found it, he eased his other leg off of the mattress and began to put his weight down on his feet.

Only for a sharp, startling pain to stab through his entire body, beginning in his arse. He barely suppressed his shout, instead spending a moment shuddering against the edge of the bed. For fuck's sake, what had Thorin done to him? And how many times?

He stood much more cautiously, and saw that he was on his shirt. There were his trousers, and his jumper, and those were _not_ his shorts, and that was not his shirt, and—

Bilbo bent down with some difficulty to gather his own clothes, listening for Thorin's snoring. He found everything but his underwear, and then, on the other side of the bed, he found more evidence that Thorin and he hadn't exactly been playing conkers. Three, no, four, wait, _five_ condoms, used and tied off, as well as a half-used tube of lubricant, a flannel, and a bottle of water that had spilled.

The only thing Bilbo could think was _Blimey_. That explained his poor bum. To think a man Thorin's age could go five times in a night. He'd always heard the Khazad were a hardy people, but _really_.

_Well, Dis always said—_

Bilbo's stomach clenched. Bugger the shorts, he could buy more.

He winced through the room with his armful of clothes and hesitated at the door. It was closed, so he would have to turn the knob to open it. If anything was going to wake Thorin, it would be this.

Bilbo glanced over his shoulder at the bed. Thorin was still snoring away, arm over his head. In the dimness of the room, his body was huge and dark against his lovely pillows, his sumptuous bed. His hair was blacker than black, where it wasn't silvered, and his legs looked even longer and more muscular than they did when he was upright. The hair of his chest and stomach tapered down to his pelvis, where it became his pubic hair, thick and dark around his inert cock.

The pang Bilbo felt then surprised him. He had never done a runner on anyone before; it seemed so rude. If it had been anyone else, Bilbo would have tried to make some polite noise. Getting dressed, perhaps, or using the toilet, even the shower. He would have looked for an opportunity to express his appreciation of them, even in some small way, to at least say good morning before he left. He'd never just _gone_.

Very, very quietly, Bilbo opened the bedroom door, slipped out, and shut it again behind him, easing through the click of metal.

On the other side of the door, Bilbo yanked on his clothes, grimacing every time his poor body registered another complaint. It wasn't just his bum, but also his mouth and chin and neck, which felt rubbed raw, and his hips and thighs where they were spongy with new bruises. His shoulders and ears stung, and he knew without looking that there would be teeth marks. He couldn't think how he must look, or how he was going to face his students in the afternoon in such mauled condition.

_I can hear it now,_ Bilbo moaned to himself. _Professor Shaggins. Good Time Baggins. Poofessor Back-end, Department of Shirt-Lifting. It's uni all over again._

Bilbo toddled into the living room as he was pulling his jumper over his head. The flat was more or less the same as it had been the first and only previous time he'd been in it. Dark colours, heavy drapes and blinds, a minimum of furniture, everything looking vastly stiff and unwelcoming, the twilit grotto of a man who didn't believe in comfort in either concept or practice. A few things were different, though, if his memory could be trusted. The kitchen counters were different, redone from cold, hostile stainless steel to much warmer granite, and there were copper pots hanging the wrong way. Bilbo himself had commented on the awful steel counter tops and the bare hooks when he'd been in there helping with the wineglasses on that night two years ago, and he was glad to see that someone had finally agreed. The sofa was new, cosy linen in place of the leather monstrosity he'd had to politely sit on for two hours. He remembered it as almost supernaturally uncomfortable on top of being indecently expensive, something he'd mentioned to Dis after they'd left.

Against his will, Bilbo's feet slowed in their dash for the front door. His eye was caught by something that appeared to be a nerve plant in a terrarium, except it had been left in the worst possible place for light and the plant was dead. It was shatteringly out of place in an otherwise sterile flat, but it was proof that _someone_ had tried to make the place less of a tomb. Were there more books than he remembered? _That_ shelf hadn't been there before, surely. Unconsciously mooching closer, Bilbo read a few titles: Kissinger's _On China_ , Needham's _Science and Civilization in China, The Rape of Nanking_ by Iris Chang, _City of Darkness_ and _Phantom Shanghai_ , and several of Mo Yan's books. There were even a few Pearl S. Buck novels, and Walter's _Red Capitalism_.

Bilbo's eyebrows were raised. Dis had never mentioned her brother's interest in China. Of course that he _was_ interested was not too strange, considering how much business he must have in that part of the world. Hadn't Bilbo heard something or other about Erebor Industries buying a building in Beijing just before Bilbo himself had scurried back to England? He seemed to recall it being on the news when Bard and he had been having their last fight in front of the telly. What a pleasant surprise, though, to find that there really was such a thing as a Khazad who was interested in any culture other than his own.

_Shame I can never see or speak to him again,_ Bilbo thought a bit wistfully. They might have discussed some of these books, especially Mo Yan, and if Thorin was trying to learn Mandarin, well, Bilbo had been fluent for nearly a year. He'd never imagined that Dis's joyless monolith of an eldest brother could have such an intellectual bent. Bilbo really ought to have made more of an effort, back then. Or maybe it was better that he hadn't, present circumstances considered.

Bilbo's bespoke coat, bought in Beijing, was on the floor in the foyer, slumped against a dreadful wrought iron umbrella stand that didn't have any umbrellas in it. Thorin's was nearer the door, and their shoes had been flung every which way. Despite his urgency, Bilbo got a hanger and put Thorin's coat and shoes in the closet before putting on his own. He was feeling less panicked than depressed by now, disappointed in himself for the mess he'd made within a week of finally coming home from what was supposed to have been a one-year sabbatical. He hadn't planned to ever see either Dis or Thorin again anyway, but still—he'd rather have gone on pretending they didn't exist with some measure of dignity. Getting dead pissed and going home with Thorin was more or less the opposite.

_You didn't throw up on him,_ Bilbo consoled himself. _You didn't cry._ No tears, no sick, and, in the future, a much more responsible consumption of alcohol, to prevent the possibility of fucking any other ex-siblings. He couldn't _un_ sleep with Thorin, so he'd just have to do the mature thing: pretend it hadn't happened and deny everything if asked.

The appalling spasms in his backside were subsiding. He was wearing as much of his own clothes as he could find, and would simply have to hope that Thorin was not the type to put a runaway one-off's underwear on the internet. He combed his hair with his fingers as best he could, checked his buttons, and straightened his coat. The beard burn would have to wait for home. He'd keep his head down and hope no one noticed.

He unlocked the front door, took a deep breath, and opened the door in a flood of brisk morning air just in time for Vilsson to jab him in the chest with a key.


	2. Chapter 2

People always talked about shock as if a sufficient degree of it could alter certain fundamental qualities of nature. Time suspended, or slowed; the world, or sometimes the more ineffable _everything_ , stopped on its axis. Bilbo had read loads of these sorts of emotional, hyperbolic analogies, but had never had it occur to him, not even at exactly 3:03 PM on the worst day of his life. He'd always thought that if it were going to happen to him, it would have been then; but it hadn't.

It continued to not happen. Apparently, this entirely new trauma, while adequate to cause his heart to jump into his throat and make him wish he would just die of an infarction already, was insufficient to affect any natural phenomena. Time continued to pass at its usual rate. The world did not stop, much less everything. Vilsson continued to exist, and he was staring.

Staring with his mouth open, the hand with the key hanging in mid-air. Bilbo noticed, with not insignificant irritation, that even pop-eyed and gaping, Vilsson was unjustifiably good-looking. _Excessively_ so. Perfect dark brows, perfect straight nose, perfect white teeth. Lovely fair skin. He had his black hair loose to his shoulders, cut rather indifferently in what Bilbo knew from an anthropology class ( _The Khazad: A Diaspora_ , or, as a fellow professor had put it, _Those Hairy Buggers: Why Can't They Get With the Programme_ ) was the uninitiated Khazad youth's traditional profusion of loose hair.

 _God, it just isn't fair,_ thought Bilbo. _And I have to look at him three days a week for the entire year. I'll have a complex by the time this is done._

The mental allusion to their respective positions at the university served as a jolt to his short term memory. He was standing at the front door of the flat of the brother of the woman he had fled a kingdom to avoid, wearing an alarming degree of friction burn and no underwear. He was leaving the flat of a man with whom he'd been in bed, after a drunken night of five condoms' worth of how's your father, which was a euphemism he mustn't ever use again, and somehow, some way, the one student from whom he absolutely _had_ to keep a professional distance was _standing in front of him with a key to that flat._

 _This is not happening._ Bilbo could feel his panic beginning to unravel into hysteria. _This is not real. This is not my life._

 _Run,_ a voice whispered in his ear. _Jolly good idea,_ Bilbo whispered back, and then he tried to quickly push by Vilsson on the hypothesis that while Vilsson was as tall as a house, he also listened to Animal Collective and wore skinny jeans.

This hypothesis was disproved immediately when Vilsson, instead of falling back like a civilized person, stepped forward and slammed his hands into the door frame on either side, forming an unexpectedly solid barrier. Bilbo, being English and unprepared, ended up the one to withdraw, tripping over his own feet.

Vilsson was breathing somewhat harder than seemed required. His eyes were wide and glaring at the same time, and his fingertips were turning white where he gripped the door frame. He looked utterly mad.

Before Bilbo could think of anything to say besides _This isn't what it looks like!_ or _Shite!_ , Vilsson took another step. Then another. And another. His hands left the frame but his arms remained outstretched, so that he was walking toward Bilbo with his hands open and his arms spread, like a Khazad Jesus in a leather jacket. Stupefied, Bilbo retreated backward into the flat, straight through the foyer and into the living room, where his poor arse met one end of the sofa and made him flinch.

For a terrifying second, Bilbo thought Vilsson wasn't going to stop, but then he did, directly in front of Bilbo. His arms were still spread, and the heavy breathing continued. Bilbo could see the pulse in Vilsson's neck.

Vilsson's hands closed and opened. He visibly swallowed. Then he whispered, “Professor Baggins?”

“Yes,” Bilbo whispered back.

A dense silence fell. Vilsson was still staring. Bilbo abruptly realized that he'd sort of huddled in on himself, his arms pulled up against his chest. He wanted to straighten his spine and lower his hands, or cross his arms, stand like the authority figure he was, but Vilsson was looking more and more like a homicidal maniac and perhaps cowering wasn't exactly the wrong response.

Finally, just when Bilbo was forcing himself to seriously consider the infinitely mortifying last resort of shouting for Thorin to please come save him from a first year Oriental Studies student, Vilsson said, “What are you doing here?”

Not loudly, thank heavens. If Vilsson wasn't about to make a lampshade of him, then Thorin could stay asleep. “What are _you_ doing here?”

Vilsson had the nerve to glare. “I asked first.”

Bilbo hesitated. “I was, I was just leaving.”

“You were just—” Vilsson's eyes narrowed. “It's half past eight. You're _just_ leaving?”

 _Oh,_ now _you're sharp,_ Bilbo thought rather bitterly. _Yesterday you asked whether_ Journey to the West _was before or after_ Frontiers. “I'm an early riser! Good morning!” Bilbo attempted to slip around toward the door, but Vilsson had the wingspan of an albatross. Bilbo was unceremoniously herded back into place.

Vilsson sniffed audibly. “What is that?” Stepping closer, lowering his arms, Vilsson all but put his face into Bilbo's neck and inhaled. “Why do you smell like that?”

Bilbo was aghast. This was a good few miles beyond impertinence. Dr. White probably had CCTV in there somewhere and was this minute filling out the forms for Bilbo's immediate termination on grounds of inappropriate behaviour with a student. “Don't you _smell_ me!”

“You don't wear cologne,” accused Vilsson. His eyes swept over Bilbo, making him feel even more naked than when he'd been naked. “Are you not wearing underwear?”

Bilbo made a noise that he'd only produced once before in his life, during an incident on a bus in rural Hebei which involved an elderly Chinese woman and her conviction that small, nervous Westerners didn't mind being physically assaulted on public transportation. He snatched at his coat and pulled it down over his crotch. _“Stop looking!”_

Vilsson smiled as if he couldn't help himself, his eyes fond. Then his gaze traced Bilbo's mouth and neck and Bilbo could almost _see_ the psychopathy boiling up. “Get that from the rug, did you?” he said, through gritted teeth.

Bilbo had no idea what the mad child was on about, but then, as if his face was trying to be helpful, he felt again that peculiar tingle of chafed skin. _“It most certainly is n—”_

He faltered. Without warning, a memory had sprung into his head: him, bent over on his knees, face down and arse up, shirt and jumper in his armpits and his unzipped trousers and shorts shoved down around his thighs, whimpering and crying out into, yes, that actually was a rug, as someone, a certain someone with a deep, growling voice and huge hands, hammered into him from behind, Bilbo's gasps and sobs drowned out by the vehement, desperate Khuzdul being groaned louder and louder—

Bilbo's mouth was open. He raised a hand to cover it, and beneath his fingers he could feel the heat coming into his face, how he was flushing red from forehead to clavicle.

There was a curious sound from Vilsson, as if he'd been punched in the sternum. Bilbo looked up and straight into a pair of lovely dark eyes and brows that were wrenched into an expression of such genuine and artless hurt that Bilbo instantly felt about a million years old and like a complete wanker.

“That isn't _fair_ ,” cried Vilsson, in a tone which from anyone even slightly uglier would have been a whine. “How could you, Bilbo? I saw you first!”

“That is _Professor Baggins_ to you, Vilsson!” said Bilbo, alarmed. “If I've told you once I've—it is _entirely_ inappropriate for you to refer to me by my given name, and furthermore I am more than ten years older than you—”

Vilsson's face turned obstinate. “So _you_ can do it, but _I_ can't? You know he's forty-nine!”

“Wha—” Bilbo could feel that heart attack coming on again, only this time from sheer vexation. “You—! I'm—how do you—it is _none_ of your business who I—why are you even—and I am _not_ —really, he's forty-nine?—”

Vilsson had another sniff. “Were you drinking?”

Bilbo closed his mouth and scowled. Vilsson scowled right back. Then, to Bilbo's unmitigated horror, Vilsson actually put his hands on Bilbo's face and neck, cupping his aching head, and began to lean in, nose first.

 _Don't,_ Bilbo could have wailed, _we don't know where that's_ been _!_ Panicking, and infuriated with this gorgeous young twat who seemed determined to get him sacked, Bilbo tried to simultaneously shove Vilsson off and kick him in the shin.

Shoving him was useless. Bilbo had the upper body strength of a consumptive kitten. Kicking, however, was much more effective, because he had what his family, friends, and exes all referred to as _iron fuck-off freak feet_ , and several people had described getting kicked by them as _like getting bloody shot, they should make you get a fucking license_. He once accidentally concussed a chav wearing a bike helmet.

Vilsson was not concussed, but he did make an interesting noise right before he collapsed. Regrettably, he collapsed _forward_ , onto Bilbo, who'd had limited structural integrity to begin with. An agonizing burst of pain came from his bum, then the arm of the sofa caught the backs of his knees and Bilbo sprawled backward onto the cushions, Vilsson on top of him.

“ _Mahal_ on a pony, my _leg_ ,” whinged Vilsson. “You've crippled me!”

Bilbo didn't answer. He was busy catching his breath and trying not to be sick. Vilsson was somehow managing to find every last dodgy bit of his stomach, seemingly made of nothing but elbows. 

Somewhere above his head, Bilbo heard a door open.

 

The first time Bilbo ever met Thorin Eikinskjaldi, he spilled thousand-pound wine all over both Thorin and his ugly sofa.

It was one of those moments he would gladly have surgically removed from his brain, by fork if necessary. Standing there with his mouth open and his eyes wide, dripping glass in hand, while Dis made a piteous attempt at not laughing and Thorin looked stonily down into his soaked lap, something oh so slightly _if you weren't shagging my sister I would have you killed and actually that doesn't seem like a reason not to have you killed_ about his brow. Bilbo had panicked, of course, because that was what he did when he was trying to impress a woman's most important relatives and absolutely bollocksing it, and he'd prattled some nonsense along the lines of _I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!_ as he got out his handkerchief and actually tried to—the horror— _wipe at his girlfriend's brother's wet lap by hand_. Dis had slid off the sofa and onto the floor, laughing so hard she soon began to hiccup, and Thorin had actually _snarled_ at Bilbo, snatching the handkerchief out of his hand and shoving him back with one very huge palm against one very little shoulder before sixteen stone of damp Khazad muscle stood up from his drenched seat and stalked off in all his injured dignity to change his soggy trousers.

Years later, in Beijing, when a student's wealthy divorced mother sent him an altogether too expensive bottle for reasons he'd never cared to examine, he actually had to give the bottle away to one of his colleagues, unable to drink it for the trauma he now associated with overpriced wine. Dis had had to go into the kitchen and hold him for nearly a quarter of an hour before he could calm down enough to try facing Thorin again. He'd been so distraught, and then so relieved when Thorin tersely instructed him to _stop crying, it's all right_ , that he'd even forgotten to get his handkerchief back.

Two years had not done much to Thorin, besides perhaps add a few white hairs. His features had that timeless, indestructible quality that was particular to the Khazad, who looked thirty when they were fifteen but then stayed looking thirty until about ten minutes before they died, statistically either of rage or industrial accident. His hair was longer, his beard was thicker, and he was decidedly more naked, but other than those minor details, Thorin looked almost exactly the same, right down to the vaguely murderous expression on his face.

He wasn't _entirely_ naked, Bilbo was relieved to see. He'd put on some trousers, at least, before coming out into the living room to stare down at Vilsson lying atop of Bilbo on the new sofa. Thorin had a stern, slightly befuddled expression on his face, the one that said he didn't know quite what to make of the situation but was definitely keeping biblical wrath as an option.

Mahal, Bilbo thought, gazing up at the man he'd once groped in front of the man's sister, _why do you hate me? What have I ever done to you? I'm C of E anyway, leave me alone._

“Ugh,” groaned Vilsson. Then he looked up, and belligerence filled his pretty face. “Uncle Thorin! You _arsehole_!”

Bilbo—frowned.

Vilsson was trying to get upright, which he accomplished mostly by sitting on Bilbo. He was still shouting but in Khuzdul, which Bilbo was too distracted to translate because _Uncle?_

Contrary to popular opinion, Bilbo wasn't totally oblivious. Vilsson obviously had some connection to Thorin, and Bilbo had been for the last several minutes coming up with increasingly unseemly possibilities that mostly had to do with Thorin's apparent willingness to bring home drunken younger men he'd met somewhere in or near a pub and Vilsson's disturbingly persistent attraction to older men. How big could the gay Khazad community really be, anyway? But Vilsson's earlier comment about Thorin's age had dashed most of those suspicions, and then he'd begun thinking in terms of relatives. The two were nothing alike, but Khazad family trees were Byzantine¹, impossible for outsiders to navigate without a chart and footnotes. A young cousin, perhaps, once or thirty times removed. Goodness knew Bilbo had plenty of those himself, and some of them could be just as charmingly unbearable as Vilsson, if not so sexually aggressive. Well, as far as he knew.

But, _Uncle?_ Thorin had two siblings, Frerin and Dis, and Dis had told Bilbo that Frerin had no children. That only left—

He didn't know if he made a noise, or if perhaps his expression had changed extra loudly, because suddenly Vilsson stopped grating away in Khuzdul at Thorin and looked down at Bilbo, his dark brows knit in concern. “Bilbo? Are you all right?”

He heard Thorin move closer, but didn't look at him. Bilbo had to look at Vilsson. He had to keep looking at him, because the longer Bilbo looked at Vilsson, the clearer everything became to him, and oh, he must be the _stupidest_ man alive.

 _Oh._ Bilbo couldn't breathe. _Oh, he looks just like her. He looks just like her._

“Bilbo?” The lad sounded so worried, his voice getting smaller. “Bilbo, what is it?”

Bilbo _really_ couldn't breathe. He was trying, but Vilsson must keep all his fat in his hair because he was _so much heavier than he looked_. Bilbo's sternum practically touched his spine and he choked.

The relief was immediate and abrupt: there was a sudden movement over his head, Vilsson yelped, and the weight vanished. There was a tell-tale thump. Bilbo tried to lift himself up with arms that refused to cooperate, and then there were hands under his shoulders, large, warm hands that effortlessly pulled him into a sitting position.

Bilbo had just enough room to think, briefly and with much yearning, of a cup of tea, and then Thorin sat down beside him, took Bilbo in his arms, and pressed Bilbo's face firmly into his bare, hairy chest.

Two years, an entire continent, and five condoms after the last, disastrous time they'd met, the first thing Bilbo heard Thorin Eikinskjaldi say, in a voice more commanding than comforting, was “Shhh, don't cry.”

The tears evaporated. _Does he_ think _,_ Bilbo seethed into Thorin's chest, _that I just wander the world looking for people to cry on? Is_ that _who he thinks I am, a weepy little queer who needs a big Khazad man to pet his hysterics away? Bastard! Just because I don't play sports or do gym—_

One of Thorin's hands was rubbing his back, just a little too hard. There was something very stiff and determined about the gesture, as if it was something he'd practised but never actually done. It felt obscurely familiar, and was making Bilbo sleepy against his will.

Thorin's other hand was up in the air as he pointed imperiously at the front door. “Kili. Out.”

Vilsson scowled, an expression that should have been fearsome but could only ever be adorable now that Bilbo knew who Vilsson's mummy was. “Thorin. _Fuck off_.”

Oh my. Look at the stones on this one. Stones which, judging by the stiffening of Thorin's arms, he wouldn't have for much longer.

 _“Kili,”_ said Thorin, voice dropping a hundred octaves, and Bilbo had heard more ambiguous warnings from civil defence sirens. “Get out _now_.”

 _“You get out,”_ said Vilsson, almost shouting. “And get off of my boyfriend!”

The silence that fell was deafening. Bilbo had never heard a deafening silence before, and would have taken an academic interest if he hadn't been about to wet himself. Thorin was utterly still. The hand that was rubbing Bilbo's back had stopped and was resting against his spine, which reminded Bilbo inexplicably of how very huge Thorin's hands were and how very little Bilbo's neck was. Then that hand clenched, ever so slowly and with a drag of the fingertips and nails that made Bilbo want to whimper, and made a fist against Bilbo's back. Thorin's other hand, which he'd lowered to rest on Bilbo's shoulder, gripped Bilbo's arm so tightly that he knew it would bruise and that.

That.

That was not good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¹ Byzantines themselves referred to anything unnecessarily complicated as _khazadós_. A vicious ethnolinguistic circle. Peredhil 1999: 539.


End file.
